When the world grows old - or why RPG "Dungeons" aren't as fantasy only as you'd think.

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"So, you say young Jim ain't right?" asked Zekeial as they wandered for a place to sit and eat their lunch.
"Yep, he's got the bug, ah ken tell it. Keeps askin' bout them ruins over yonder..."
"Got the bug then. I mean what do you need to know? A few thousand years ago there was some great empire covering Urth and they had great cities and probably were able to visit Luna to see her giant trees and shallow oceans. Then it fell like they all do. Just within a hundred spans there's a dozen such ruins from different times, thousands of years past and not that any sane man would but if you dig down...!"  Zekial paused, he didn't dare speak of what little he heard that hid in the deep, dark Earth...  Things from the forgotten past, Abhuman creatures that made Goblins look as cuddly as Half-Size person ladies with nice big chests...  Of that one time he had to go to the coastal city and tried for a shortcut and saw an ancient mountain with the Cruel Emperor's face carved in it and it had barely corroded despite so many thousands of years...  Normal folk just never wanted to think about it.  His fight with bad memories was interrupted fortunately by his friend going on about his son.
"..and he keeps pesterin' me and poor Speaker Edmun at the Agnost Church - what specific empires? How long did they last? What kind of treasures and wonder items might he find...?"
"So - you gonna beat it out of him, then...?"
"Nope. He's of age and I'd probably lose, he's a strappin' strong youth now.  If only he'd asked years ago so I coulda whupped him like I did when he lied about doing his chores or was trying to sneak a peek at the MakHady girls bathin... Not an option now and he'd only hate me fer tryin' t' talk sense into him. Only way to do it is let him go I fear. Least I got two other sons, thank the Increate, and a Daughter so pretty don't need no Dowry."
"Just gonna let him go?"
"He can't till the soil on his own if he's thinkin' of some other places other times and practicing with a sword at night. He'll have to sow his wild oats and maybe come back...or send money at least..."

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Greetings, TTRPG hobbyists.  Welcome to this page be it you just started say be escaping the Monty-Haul meets "Gender Studies" sh- t of the 5th edition and today's "Modern Audience" mainstream back to 90s and 80s players - the Grognardz and 1st Gen Munchkins (Gen X players) who cut their teeth in the late 70s and early 1980s...

The focus of this is over the "Dungeon" itself.  I feel this is "Master of the Obvious" but some legit do not know and there's too much deconstruction in the world going on - all they have left is Nihilism and Mockery.  They think they are so smart to demand forced 'diversity' or point out silly things. Excuse me, people, the lady in the chainmail bikini is there to SELL the BOOK.  OF COURSE if she naturally looked like a 90s Penthouse Pet without makeup or surgery in a Renissance/Pre-industrial world she'd be lining up to have rich suitors and jump a class level not needing to fight or go in forbidden ruins...

Anyways, you've all heard that the endless "Dungeons" are ridiculous from faceless people pointing out how weird it'd be to find such a complex in your back yard much less a world so full of them some people make a very good if highly risky income going into them...  Wouldn't it be an 'Archeological discovery of the century'?

Well, if it happened today, yes.

But that shows how little read those people are.

The world of the "Dungeons and ----" base TTRPG game is the far, far FUTURE...!

Suggested reading Jack Vance, notably "The Dying Earth" and at least the short-story from it, Mazarian the Magician.

If Tolkien or rather his "Estate" was Disney suing to get some murals of their characters in a day care center painted BLACK even though they sold no wallpaper and wouldn't accept $ to keep them up and it was free advertising.... Well, luckily Jack Vance was Flattered for he was the unpaid architect.  Not that he didn't stand on the shoulders of giants, from Clark Ashton Smith to HGWells, Dusnany, Hodgkin...  

The basic long and short of "Why SO many Dungeons, Caves, ruins...?" is that the world of endless dungeon exploration is the far, FAR future and civilization has risen and fallen many, MANY times - so there's endless dungeons, monsters, treasures and a big part of why "Wandering Heroes" aka "Murder Hobos" aka "Fortune's Fools" are tolerated and allowed casual safe passage is that nobody wants to confront these otherwise.  

You'd think "Oh, come on, a cave full of Goblins, send in the town guards..." right?  Yeah, a cave if it's only a natural one one room deep and the goblins are right next to the road.  But people don't want to go into the deep ruins because it's going back into time to confront how alone they are in an endless weight of history.  Man has gone to the stars and 'conquered' them numerous times, man has split into different forms some nearly different species, man has tried almost EVERY type of civilization many times, every religion, every philosophy.  Everything changes but is the same. Farmers plow fields in the shadow of ruined buildings, some of which might have stretched to the sky or anchored palaces far above the tallest mountains from giant near unbreakable cables which now snake for many leagues and were cut tens or more of thousands of years ago.

Families might have lived in a mansion set in the side of the hollow hills and mountains.  But they've walled off the outer chambers from deeper, inner chambers and when they pack up their living space they think first of just building outwards even though it seems SO cheap to just open a few walled off doors and expand inwards...  So they hire adventurers for a small fee and allow them to take any treasure or magical items they can find.  And they are shocked when what they thought might be a few dozen rooms was essentially the entire mountain and deep into the earth... Or the spoiled and a bit touched youngest great grand-daughter who has the luxury of her own room and talks about imaginary friends from the other side of the barred off door who whispered in ancient languages wasn't that touched...!

The paradigm for the Fantasy Table Top Role Playing Game was set in the 1970s era as new readers looked back on the Golden age of science fiction and fantasy and there was an incredible boom in mass-market paperbacks in that genre.  There were tons of bookstores and magazine shops all over selling comic books, magazine comics, magazines and books.

Around this time Gygax and others created the pure fantasy RPG which evolved from fantasy based miniature army play.  It was pure fantasy not needing props though it still had rules based on miniatures for some situations like combat but it focused on the experience more than the strict realism or spectacle of earlier wargaming.

Although the mainstream which is now savaging this hobby seems to only think about Tolkien and if he was 'ripped off' or not there were so many influences on this genre it is hard to count.  "Appendix N" is the reference and I won't get into a history that's already been done so many times.

This is about how a fantasy TTRPG - especially the Orange Sun / Far Tomorrows - is set in the far future of about a million years ahead.  This gives tribute to HG Wells's "The Time Machine" and the works of Jack Vance such as "Mazarian the Magician" from his Dying Earth stories.

And it is to address the issue of the endless "Dungeons" the heroic adventurers raid so often and  how of all the elements fantastic these should require the least "Suspension of Disbelief".

That far in the future we'll have civilization rising and falling dozens, possibly a hundred times.  Time will be a blur, too much for any one person to truly grasp, and it will lock the people of the far tomorrows into an eternal "Now" where they cling to their niche of ignorance and mythology.  There is no future and the past is unknowable so they live in the "Now".

Thus, kingdoms will rise and fall, every few thousand years the great wheel will repeat itself with savagery and barbarianism leading to city-states then kingdoms and empires then enlightenment and advanced civilization.  There might possibly be another space age and a few rockets constructed from parts found in entropic ancient ruins make trips to space...  Then it falls again and returns to barbarianism.  It is different but still the same every time.

And the layer after layer after layer of this will become the "Dungeons" the explorers dig into.

Deep, dark, deadly dungeons that only those who have fallen to utter desperation or are somehow not able to satisfy themselves with life's joys and sorrows and so dare the forbidden.  On the surface it is for wealth and treasure but beneath that it is that they are hearing the "Call to Adventure" and are on the path to becoming heroes like in Wonder Tales of old.  IF - they survive...!

The thing is the "Dungeons" are mostly just ancient ruins of the many, many layers of civilizations that rose and fall.  The planet has probably been mined near to the very core and there have been many great Arcologies built, especially in the far north and deep into the ground.  Furthermore the great upheavals of the endless wars, global shifts and comet strikes have managed to completely scour the landscape and even continents and so there are literally sky scrapers built of advanced metamaterials that sank deeper than they were high in the skies.

It's natural that when structures are abandoned they are sunken into the earth or deliberately buried - even in the real world in proven history.  The more levels you go down the farther back you go.  While a civilization can advance in tech and available energy to completely erase a structure for a completely new one, most literally pile dirt over it not waiting to sink it in or expend the time or money to completely remove it.  When an advanced civilization ends the survivors usually abandon it a few lifetimes then the inheritors or conquerors use but build over the structures.

The Far-Tomorrows is about a thousand of thousands of years since the time it was said the Increate himself incarnated in the body of a Man and lived and died as one.  This was Two thousands of years before man first achieved space flight and Five thousands of years before the reign of the Cruel Emperor Tzon-Chon.

Since the horrific years of Tzon-Chon rule easily a hundred major civilizations have come and gone.

So - remember if you were into TTRPGs young, especially late Boomers and Xers aka first gen Munchkin gamers - how you got that bit of graph paper - you photocopied the sample from the D&D book, you might have been lucky and had a drafting store nearby?  And you spent all that time making "Dungeons" on that graph paper.  Maybe a nerd or snarky kid went "Come On, no cave is like that...!  That's a skyscraper that's messy from being abandoned..." and they said that like they were the smartest people in the world?

Well they were right - these "Dungeons" even if they've turned into caves and have different decorations than the far past are often great structures made many thousands of years ago.  The root frame was designed to be a near indestructible meta-material that could resist Atomics, even a Stone Burner weapon.  These survived the wars and other disasters that ended their civilizations and were buried in upheavals.  Most are straight but some are on their sides or at odd angles.  And over thousands of years many creatures explored or went there to hide and some changed or added to them.

Low level monsters and bandits often hide in or just above these and they have the least treasure; Gold, gems, items - usually stolen from locals as are any special jewelry.  That's good, one of the reasons the "Heroic Aventurers" are tolerated is that they are used to fight bandits.  The Dukes, Princes, Marquis's need their "Noble Knights" there to beat peasants for taxes, guard their towns, make sure the bridge is repaired, take the new maid to the play room, etc.  

They aren't going to have them out fighting bandits when they might need to quell a peasant revolt or be there for an assassination attempt.  If "Fortune's Fools" aka adventurers risk life and limb fighting Goblins, Orcs and bandits it's well worth letting them keep what is on them.  They usually pay some to the tax collector and return specific items to peasants if their family name is inscribed on them.

But when you go deeper - you find things long forgotten and what dwells that deep has all but forgotten the Sun above and that there ever was a surface world.  These can be far more dangerous but the runs get more valuable as you go deeper.

The deepest levels hold the greatest perils and items usually.  Only a hidden stronghold of a long passed "Wizard-Lord" might be more dangerous with more rewards.  Some go back even to the Reign of the Cruel Emperor and some might have been from before.  These are very, very rare as the Cruel Emperor Tzon-Chon did his best to try to erase all history so it would begin with him and was more successful than those before or after him who obtained absolute power for a while.  Even far in the West one finds it hard to not find a mountain not carved as a titanic statue or the colossal face of some ancient monarch and while his ruins are deeply buried the face of the Cruel Emperor Tzon-Chon is still all over the world.

Some intellectuals and/or Priests of the Agnost Orthodox Church try to study Man's long, long history.  Few even approach in a lifetime the full knowledge of all the many empires, civilizations, cultures, religions that came and went in the near thousand of thousands of years since the Increate wore the flesh of Man.  Some humble Abbeys and Great Churches are built over the tops of these "Sky-Scrapers" and have perhaps a hundred floors beneath that are filled with countless books and other means of writing or storing knowledge.  Some books have light that emits from the pages and shapes dance to tell stories.  Some are just cubes or book shaped hard boxes that speak and sometimes respond.  Others are strange crystals that might glow and tell a story.  Of course there are scrolls, great wheels of knotted cord...  But above all the "Book" has endured over so many thousands of years.  While this format is not immortal fortunately some time a mere few tens of thousands of years since the Increate's birth as a Man there were found a few "Perfect" techniques of Algal leather parchment and Fuligin black ink that in reasonable storage last many thousands of years and even when decaying give centuries to carefully read and re-scribe their contents before disintegrating.

This is an aspect of this far future world - it's not that the cruel hand of time has erased all history, but rather that there is now far too much history for any human to fully comprehend.  

It doesn't matter if you have a character who is a time warped or frozen man from today (see "Bridges of Time" chapter) and he decides to prove things that have become mythologized.  He'd be throttled by a normally kind Paladin "How DARE you say that St Elvish of the Rockah and the Rollah was some brilliant but sad indulgent Bard!?  Are you that stupid?  How do you not lose all your money to con-artists?  This is a vile, blasphemous FICTION!!!" -and he smashes the crystal archival record he found...showing a man shake his pelvis for classic Rock and Roll. (Crystal Archival -> based on quartz archive tech being developed now...)

So in essence the "Fantasy World" of the classic "Draconic" format TTRPG on the surface looks like a Renissance world or in the case of Orange Sun / Far Tomorrows a late Renissance or pre-industrial world though it's the far future.  The magic works, the various Abhumans called "Demi-Humans" in the 1970s exist.  And the least of all suspension of disbelief should be the endless "Dungeons" those who choose the heroes path can explore for fortune and fame if they survive the peril.

The base Orange Sun / Far Tomorrows TTRPG project is meant to be like the classic "Draconic" game that we are breaking with due to "Current Thing" politics.  We will return to the spirit of the 1970s era Science - Fantasy for the world though it'll be much like a "Fantasy World".  Also you need not worry the excess of history, there will be tables to roll things up on the fly!

One note however is that most TTRPGs are supposedly "Medieval" though in function they are late Renaissance ...  Not so with ours - it is a "Pre-Industrial" society aka late late Renaissance - imagine the pre world wars Europe...  That's the Confederated Fiefdoms or the "Western Culture" where the game starts.  It's meant to have an approaching 'modern' flavor and someone from the modern age transported there might think they slipped back in time a century though all the languages and names would be off - then they'd slowly discover they were in the far-future.

It's similar but different to history - the Nobles and most people cling to the "Old Ways" of the now romanticized Renaissance equivalent past.  This was two thousand years (versus 500) of heraldry, chivalry, legendary battles of nights and valor and honor... Thus a "Knight" is a proud social noble status and even elected officials bow to them, though they don't mind "Modern" things like Doctors who wash their hands before an operation and use careful doses of Opiates to make the pain bearable along with antibiotics.  Painters still use oil - lindseed oil, cut canvasses, mix pigments though enough chemistry knowledge to not use toxic lead, arsenic or do cruel and or unethical things like robbing mummies from the eternal land of Aegypt for a type of "Brown".  However the painters do not have to hand mix their own paints, they can buy them from art supply stores and there are different qualities for different classes.

The world is DEEP - layer after layer after layer.  Ancient "Arcologies" big corporate or state buildings designed to house mini or huge civilizations, such as in the arctic, in entire mountains, under the seas...  Giant mansions. Huge cities.  All of these civilizations are immortal in their own eyes and all fall be it a few decades or centuries or a few thousands of  years.  Then new ones build on top of them as they sink into the earth.  Even in the real world with 'official' civilization going back only a few thousand years and even the 'hidden history' aka paranormal stuff putting it back ten times that much (Age of Leo - 10,000 B.C. era, maybe a few tens of thousand before that...) there's tons of buried structures that once was full of life.  Whole cities now have under cities, we've found buried palaces, ruins that defy Stonehenge that were just buried.

So - feel free in your TTRPG works to have TONS of "Dungeons" all over to provide a source of coin and treasure and experience for your adventurers.  It might look like a "Medieval" world, meaning Renaissance though again Far Tomorrows is set in pre-industrial effective setting.  But it's the FAR future.  Endless ruins all over the world should be the LEAST suspension of disbelief required.

--Maxx Feral

---footnote---

BTW - to lovingly credit the quote from above top middle is from Arthur C. Clarke's "Exile of the Eons" which has been reprinted a few times and during the late underground/early direct market age adapted to a very good comic format. (picture 3 of 4 below)

It might seem weird to use a "Hard" science fiction author for a wild fantasy RPG setting but again the "Far Tomorrows" is the FAR future and per Jack Vance and other scifi writers assume that in at least a near MILLION years someone will discover a LOT more to us, things that will seem magical.  Clarke's 3rd law of technology is "Any science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from Magic" - so the "Magic" that RPGs use is some decadent ancient science that literally cracked GUT and edited space/time to create another "Force" to produce effects they found useful.  The Wizards of the far tomorrows can get very powerful but are a fraction as powerful as the "Wizard-Lords" who created magic and few have any idea what they are really doing...hence "Magic".

I'll save the details for the Chapters upcoming on the Rise of the Wizard-Lords and an seperate one about the nature of "Magic" in fantasy games for "Concerned Christians" anticipating Satanic Panic 2.0...

But the irony is that getting the TTRPG genre back to the "Science Fantasy" roots you turn it into "Hard" science fiction except you've turned the "Speculation" dial to the Nth power...